Chris Barron: Cross-Train Your Crew

Some of the most successful sports teams have “depth.” In other words, everyone on the team can back each other up. What does that look like in your farming operation? Consider these questions:

• How many people in your operation can sit in all or at least multiple seats?
• Who on your team has the capacity and willingness to be flexible and available for multiple positions?
• What are some of the limitations with your existing employees?
• Are you personally willing to step out of a key operational seat to allow employees to learn more critical roles such as planting or combining?

Some producers still have a view no one can do certain jobs better than they can. This “me only” attitude can limit your operational potential, especially if you have employees with the willingness and capacity to learn how to do more critical jobs. Continually adding higher levels of responsibilities to key employees improves morale, buy-in and can limit employee turnover.

Specialized Versus General

In a world of specialization, it is easy to think we each need to be efficient or excellent at one thing. But, too often producers have one operator available for each equipment operation and have limited training or backup operators.

For example, it is common for farms to have just one main sprayer operator. Consequently, one of that sprayer operator’s chief responsibilities should be cross-training another team member to backfill his or her position.

That is often hard to do when labor is lean, but the consequences of not having someone else to backfill a position creates even more of an issue. Now is a great time to critique your operation with respect to cross-training.

Gauge the Depth of Your Bench

Talk to your employees about where you are running too lean in terms of skills. Ask these 10 questions and document their feedback to maximize your team’s efficiency.

1. Are we maximizing your talent potential?
2. What additional operations would you like to learn?
3. What operations do you feel overqualified for?
4. What operations do you feel underqualified for?
5. What is your least favorite operation?
6. What is your most favorite operation?
7. Do you see safety issues with any operations?
8. Are you properly trained for new roles?
9. What can we do to improve our training process?
10. Are we providing adequate training resources and time?

Chris Barron is director of operations and president of Carson and Barron Farms in Rowley, Iowa. He is also a national financial consultant for Ag View Solutions.